Electronics Giant Foxconn Leads $7 Million Series A in Blockchain Identity Startup

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Digital identity startup Cambridge Blockchain has closed as $7 million Series A round of financing led by Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn’s investment arm.

Announced Tuesday, the $7 million financing round also included previous investors Partech and Digital Currency Group, who injected new capital and converted the startup’s outstanding debt in exchange for equity. Partech general partner Romain Lavault specifically highlighted the startup’s enterprise data management software finding its first customers in the European market that will be fall under the norms of the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Notably, the startup confirmed that Foxconn, one of the world’s largest smartphone manufacturers, is “now exploring deployments” of its blockchain software to enhance its global supply chain operations and IoT device management.

“[D]igital identity is a critical building block to achieve value through decentralized information transfers.”

The financing is the latest investment of the Foxconn arm in funding blockchain startups since 2016 when “we saw the potential of distributed ledger technology with enterprise use cases including Industrial Internet, IoT-enabled manufacturing, supply chain provenance, trade finance, and payments,” explained Lee.

Foxconn rival Samsung is also turning to blockchain technology to manage and keep track of its massive global supply chain after estimating a blockchain platform could slash shipping costs by up to 20 percent while improving overall efficiency. The Korean firm has also begun manufacturing application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips used to produce bitcoin miners.

Samburaj is the Editor for CCN, among the earliest and foremost publications covering blockchain, cryptocurrency and financial technology news. He has authored over 1,500 articles for CCN and is invested in Bitcoin. Email: [email protected]